A number of requirements are imposed on a sports shoe, such as a running shoe, soccer shoe, basketball shoe, American Football shoe, baseball shoe or tennis shoe. This particularly includes the fact that a sports shoe is to provide very good support to the person wearing it. This is particularly important in sports with longitudinal or lateral accelerations, such as running, tennis or soccer. However, good support by the footwear is also important in sports such as climbing.
A further requirement imposed on a sports shoe is the lowest weight possible. This is particularly important when running and during fast sprints, as occur in tennis or soccer, for example.
It is currently difficult to simultaneously realize the mentioned requirements of “good support” on the one hand and “low weight” on the other hand in conventional sports shoes. Thus, a reduction of a sports shoe's weight usually results in the sports shoe providing the wearer with less support since material is dispensed with which would otherwise support the foot and ensure a firm coupling of the sports shoe to the foot.
On the other hand, the improvement of the support provided by a sports shoe to the wearer usually results in an increase in weight, for example by the application of additional fastening elements, such as buckles or hook-and-loop fasteners, or by additional reinforcements in certain areas.
Thus, there is tension between the mentioned requirements imposed on a soccer shoe so that, at best, solutions which do meet one of the mentioned requirements while disregarding other requirements are known to date.
The present invention is therefore based on the problem of providing a sports shoe which is light on the one hand and provides very good support to a wearer on the other hand.